Pantomime season

Happy New Year everyone! I do hope the Christmas holiday season has been a good one for you. Hopefully, 2011 will have plenty of joy to bring as well.

We had an ongoing pantomime with a mouse that decided it didn't think very much of the British winter in this part of the country. It had moved in lock, stock and barrel by Christmas day, and led us on a merry old chase throughout the holiday season. I did everything I could think of to eliminate food and water supplies in hopes of forcing it to pack its bags and leave under its own steam. They are not supposed to like mint so I even applied peppermint oil to all the radiators and along the bottom of a door that it had tried to chew. The chewing stopped, but it was busy making nesting material out of some minted cotton balls I had left in a strategic place last evening so I'm not as convinced now. That was the final straw for me so I spent most of last night lying in wait for it. In the end, I successfully convinced it to enter a shoe box long enough for me to slam the lid shut. My Hubby wasn't keen to drive it at least a mile away at 3:30 a.m., so we released it on the grass expanse across the street. A car came past as we were deciding how best to lift the lid without scaring the mouse up one of our legs. My Hubby reckons the driver probably thought we were up to no good, but driver, if you are reading this, we were simply letting the mouse go. Honest! Last we saw, the mouse was speeding off down the hill so with any luck, it won't be putting in a reappearance. I'm now busy disinfecting the places it accessed, and stuffing lots of steel wool into potential entry points. We are also remaining vigilant in case it invited some friends along for company but the amount of mess it left behind suggests that it was a one off. And, no, I won't be making a cross stitch pattern to commemorate the event!

Speaking of patterns, I have designed a bookmark pattern that I will be using to facilitate the blackwork workshops I will be conducting at the Pins & Needles 2011 show at the end of March. These tutorial sessions are only one hour in length so I'm keeping it pretty basic. I'm preparing instructions to accompany it for finishing at home as most visitors will want to spend more time checking out the show than stitching.

My exhibition at Saltwell Towers has now ended so I'm setting my sights next on the Pins & Needles show. I also have something in mind for the Morpeth Gathering, and there is still the Hoopoe to complete. So, it looks as though I'm going to have a reasonably busy start to the New Year. I would like to go back to Seaton Delaval Hall through the summer but that has yet to be arranged. I'll keep you posted of events as usual here.

Must go for now as I need to complete the steel wool task before night sets in. But I'll be back in the not too distant future.